


Another Suit

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They can't marry, or introduce each other to their families... but Spy will settle for the next best thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Suit

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't realize when I wrote it that I would ever write a sequel to The Suit, so... I didn't create a series to put them in. Anyway, the return of Spy's mentor.

The shop is familiar, even after so many years. The only difference, aside from the changing tides of fashion, is in a new painting dominating one corner. The owner is also familiar, though far more changed. His hair is silver, and receded by a good several inches, there are new lines, deep around his eyes and at his brow, the skin beneath his chin sags, crepelike, in a way it had not, so many years ago. 

His smile is the same, when he fixes the Spy with it. 

"And how may I help you gentlemen this evening?" He asks, with a soft, knowing lilt. 

"My friend needs a suit. A nice one." He tugs at the Sniper's elbow, bringing him up to stand before Del Floria. And at the Spy's English, Del Floria switches over seamlessly. 

"I can see. Oh, but you mustn't look glum, Monsieur, I have served more hopeless cases!"

"I don't see why I do..."

"Because you don't own one. And you ought to. A suit fine enough to be married in."

"Never gonna be married, what's the point?" The Sniper grouses. 

"You will wear it, with me, and that will be enough." The Spy whispers, and the Sniper's glowering frown softens. 

"Fine. Buy a bloody suit, then." He shakes his head. 

"So tall..." Del Floria mutters, pulling the Sniper over to stand before his three way mirror, moving his limbs and taking measurements. "Well, I have never let a customer down before, I do not intend to begin. Australian? I've never been, myself. I hear the outback is brutal but the cities are lovely. Like stepping into something out of science fiction..."

"Reckon, if you're not used to it." The Sniper shrugs. "Prefer 'brutal', myself."

"Ah, but of course. You have a... ruggedness." He winks over at the Spy, and laughs at the Sniper's blush. "Come, come now, you're among friends here, I've known about this one's proclivities since he was just the boy who swept up in the evenings. I confess I am not so different myself. This should be no surprise, man, you have eyes."

"Why am I not surprised?" The Sniper rolls his eyes, embarrassment sidelined by the revelation. "You would grow up in a bloody tailor's!"

The Spy wanders over to look at the new painting, while the Sniper is attended to-- he wants it to be a surprise, wants to feel his breath stolen away when he sees the Sniper step out dressed in... well, in whatever finery Del Floria graces him with. 

The painting is of a man, exquisitely dressed. His back is ramrod straight, slender brown hands folded in his lap, his expression is... not at all at ease. He reminds the Spy of the Sniper, in that regard, the way he looks uncomfortable in his suit, before the artist, but determined to sit for the thing, determined to be dressed up for the occasion. Judging by the style, the Spy can't tell when after his departure the painting was made. The suit is too timeless, too classic, for him to narrow it to any point in the twenty five years he's been gone. 

"Will I meet the gentleman?" He asks, gesturing. "Or was this painting to commemorate the suit and not the model?"

"You may, but not for years yet." Del Floria answers, prim, traces of a long-buried hurt beneath the words. "I may again, for that matter. There are some answers I do not pretend to have."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He shakes his head. "It was four years ago now. During surgery. These things happen. He did look good when I had that painting done-- I told the artist, don't you dare change a thing, don't you dare make his smile any more than it is in life, I adore the fact that he is uncomfortable. For once. It was a rare ability, discomfiting that man, it took me years to discover the one sure way was a suit that made him look good. Ah, see, yours is the same. Is it an effect of Australia?"

"He was Australian?" The Spy turns, startled, and quickly turns back away. A surprise. He wants it to be a surprise. Still, he can't help turning, at this synchronicity between his own life and his old mentor's. 

"English. We met... back in the first country either of us called home. We met, and we met, and after a while it stopped being an accident on both our parts-- I confess, it was never really an accident on mine. But he went off to Australia, some opportunity. He would get to learn something, those scientific secrets, he had an in through a friend, a colleague... Of course, for him, it was all about knowing, he'd have been aghast at the idea of selling any information. But in return he had to do some kind of work off in the outback. An opportunity he could not pass up, even so. And I... grew disillusioned with my own life at home, I was planning on running off to the Foreign Legion already. And so for years, for years and years, we were parted... Until one day, my old love turns up in Paris, looking to buy a suit. Do you know what he tried to buy from me? It was-- oh, like that one you're wearing now."

"No!" The Spy rejects the notion. He thinks, even after leaving BLU, that the navy suits him, buy on the man in the painting... "A brown, perhaps. A stone colored summer suit, natural linen, or a black one... but not blue!"

"It was his favorite color. I told him, absolutely not, cheri, on you? His whole wardrobe, blues and cool greys, and a little bit of green, can you imagine? Because he likes looking at them, I said, darling, then let me wear blue, but I am the one looking at you, and you come alive with a warm brown and a little bit of gold. Well, and he would say, scientific progress doesn't care how a man dresses, but the men who hire brilliant minds certainly do, I know! At least your gentleman can pick colors."

The Sniper shrugs and shifts, and does not admit to the fact that he didn't pick them. 

Del Floria sends him into a little curtained room, with several things, and tells him to take his time, and not to worry-- whatever he decided on would be fitted to him. With the Sniper occupied, he glides to the Spy's elbow.

"Do you have enemies? No, don't-- Mon gars, if you do... Don't wait a week, a month, years... don't let yourself think they will forget you. Don't think someone else will take care of them, that you can breathe just because they are across the globe from you. If you have an enemy left on this earth, when you leave me, I am telling you, you must hunt him-- them-- down."

"I know, I know--"

"This isn't a refresher course." Del Floria frowns, taking the Spy's hand. "This is me telling you, don't you ever give your enemies the chance. Whoever they are, wherever they are, if you have any old enemies left alive, you fix that oversight. You fix it now."

The Spy's stomach turns over. He doesn't know what to say. The first thought to come to mind is that he has one old enemy and it's the man he intends to spend the rest of his life with. 

Del Floria turns to the painting, sighing, his fingertips brushing the frame, only just.

"Complications?" The Spy asks, after a silent moment. 

"Nothing the assisting surgeon couldn't handle. It was a heart transplant-- one of those very hush-hush ones, did you know, they grow the heart from your own DNA? The Australians? He didn't die on the table-- Well, he did. On the patient. He was poisoned. Because I was not thorough. Don't make my mistakes."

"My Australian does not transplant magical science fiction hearts. He is an assassin. If I have enemies left, then he may be the one to kill them for me. But... thank you."

"An assassin? I approve." Del Floria nods. "Good. Stay safe. Do... you trust him?"

"I do." He feels the weight of his mentor's measuring stare. "It was his job to kill me once. The man who hired him is dead and I am alive. That tells me enough. And... I would rather die wrong about him, trusting him, than live with paranoia between the two of us."

"It sounds like you are a hopeless case."

"I am."

"... I hope retirement treats you well, then. I approve of him... and I think we can clean him up nicely."

"He lets me shave him. Straight razor. He knows my work, and lets me." The Spy beams. "With the right suit, he will clean up beautifully."

The Sniper coughs, from his little changing room, and Del Floria flits back to his side, to take everything back to be altered. 

"You'll come back tomorrow to pick your things up." He smiles, shaking both their hands, and kissing the Spy's cheeks. "And to have dinner with an old man, I hope."

"Thank you." The Spy nods. For the suit, for the dinner... for the approval, which they will never get anywhere else, which he can only pretend not to crave from somewhere. 

And back in his hotel, he settles across the Sniper's lap, and he tells the story of how he came to work for Del Floria, more than half a lifetime ago.


End file.
